When Caspar David Friedrich was just a child in Greifswald, Germany, his brother fell through thin ice and died tragically young. Historians debate the truth of the events that unfolded, but Friedrich could likely have even been the one who accidentally led his brother to the ice. This early and heavy loss--and how he processed it--would impact his life and the art movement he spearheaded.
Friedrich and artists like him defined the Romanticism movement, who rejected traditional religious subject matter and iconography and instead preferred the natural world. More specifically, man’s place and relationship to the natural world and the emotions that came as a result. Emotions ranging from awe, curiosity, and insignificance are usually wrapped up in one term Edmund Burke called “The Sublime.” In simple terms, the sublime refers to anything so grand it is beyond comprehension or imitation. Of course, that did not stop artists of the Romanticism movement from trying. Friedrich’s most famous painting, Wandering Above the Sea Of Fog (1818), is a common frontispiece on many art history chapters on Romanticism and philosophy chapters of the sublime because it portrays these values masterfully. It’s a brilliant display of indifference to the subject’s identity, even if he is the subject, and the unknown awe of the sprawling landscape. While it’s a piece I enjoy, it is nowhere near my favorite Friedrich painting. A painting I believe perfectly displays Friedrich’s philosophy in the face of the sublime is The Sea of Ice (1823-24), an incredibly personal masterpiece and the beginning of an incredible rabbit hole of the human relationship to mortality.
Friedrich had never been to the Arctic, not even close. Instead, he studied reports of the many Arctic and Antarctic expeditions that were occurring at the time, namely William Edward Parry’s attempt at the Northwest Passage. While some trips were successful, others were more tragic; this work displays the latter. He also studied the ice in small bodies of water in his native Germany, which no doubt came with painful memories. The result was a massive painting that conveyed a devastating scene on an otherwise clear and bright day: a display of mass death that would otherwise go unnoticed if someone were to walk by the painting and only glance from the corner of their eye.
The scene is oddly similar to another personal favorite piece, Michael Brill’s Spike Field (1993). The imagery has similarities to The Sea of Ice, but what has stuck with me for so long was how it attempted to utilize the human response to the sublime and, more specifically, how it failed. Michael Brill’s work was part of a larger initiative by Sandia Laboratories and the New Mexico Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP). Their mission was to determine how likely it was for someone, or something, to enter areas of nuclear waste storage for as long as they remain hazardous and find ways to deter such an event from happening. Nuclear waste has a half-life of up to 10,000 years, thousands of years longer than any human-organized organization has ever lasted. Scientists enlisted philosophers, authors, and artists to conceptualize ways to figure out how to make a warning that could stand the test of time. What came out of it is a smorgasbord of the human reaction to mortality.
Scientists proposed engraved, iconographic warning signs, but the committee scrapped this idea. There was no way to guarantee the signs’ longevity or the literary methods of future societies. Some philosophers proposed breeding cats that glowed in the presence of radioactive waste and concurrently created a mythology that warned of the dangers of glowing cats. The best concepts were the ones that displayed how irritatingly tricky it is to make something terrifying without making it incredibly fascinating. Stone totems engraved in multiple languages read, “This place is not a place of honor. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. Nothing valued is here. This place is a message and part of a system of messages. Pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.” The project did not build these totems either. The curiosity of a future explorer, of the human spirit, was too much of a risk. The spike fields were another one of these proposals. Aggressive landscapes that attempted to deter people were too likely to bring in anyone curious enough. The only lasting results of this project were the current standard nuclear biohazard symbols we know today, designed to be visually memorable but devoid of previous meaning. It’s no spike fields, but it’s the next best thing. I would not be surprised if these fields were directly inspired by Friedrich’s work, although no record states this.
In the face of the sublime, human beings begin to understand their place in the universe. This confrontation affects everyone differently, and there tend to be two extremes on the spectrum of sublime reactions. Both ends of the spectrum can be poetically summarized with the same phrase, varying only in tone and attitude. The nihilistic villain Jobu Tupaki, in the Oscar-winning Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022), said it best: “Nothing matters.” I believe the best artworks detailing the sublime, whether Romantic era paintings, sci-fi movies, or existentialist literature, have the potential to evoke any part of this sublime spectrum. The variation of this extreme entirely depends on the person observing the artwork and, by extension, the sublime.
Friedrich’s The Sea Of Ice is an outstanding example of this principle in action. The human desire to explore and conquer is overwhelmingly defeated by Mother Nature and an unforgiving universe. The shipwreck is not even of major significance in the painting and takes second place to the massive shards of ice towering toward heaven. On one end, this is a display of hopelessness. A cry of despair referencing an incredibly dark time in Friedrich’s life when he lost his brother to forces of nature outside of his control. The people on board the ship are not visible; even if they were, they would be too small to be remotely significant in the grand scheme—the sea of ice parts for no one. There is no point in these Arctic expeditions. Nothing matters.
On the other hand, perhaps our insignificance in a big world is a relief. How wonderful it is to live in a world where we can observe and appreciate the grandeur of the natural spectacle. It does not matter how many marks we make or how big they are; they will be lost to time and are too small for this world to begin with. So why not be happy? Why not explore the most ground, and take up the most space on our scale? Who is to say we are insignificant in the universe when, in my small world, it matters to me?
The absolute scale is immediately striking, and the work only becomes more interesting as I continue to observe it and learn its history, specifically its intent. The destroyed ship is not the subject of this painting, much like how the explorer in Wandering Above the Sea of Fog isn’t the true subject. You could almost miss it if you were walking by in a museum and didn’t look closer. Friedrich and many others lead the way for Romanticism in art, and this is one of the shining examples. Still, the message is the same. Many people lost their lives here, but you see none of them. Instead, an infinite icy plane with eerie and sublime shards reaches towards the heavens, but God is not there. In the sea of ice, nature is God, and it is often too powerful to care about the human spirit. And that’s okay; nature is beautiful in ways we may not be able to understand. I believe making the Godly power of nature beautiful is what Friedrich set out to do from the beginning.
Friedrich had every right to be terrified of the ice that killed his brother, yet he made it beautiful. It was a beauty lost to the audiences he released it to at the time, and I don’t blame them. It’s not an effortless beauty for everyone, and I believe Friedrich took most of his life to embrace it fully. It was an embrace in stark contrast to the Enlightenment and, to an extent, his upbringing, but he became a master of it over time. Because of him, I reference the sublime in my works whenever I can, even if I know well that no one can genuinely imitate it. The infinite can be terrifying, stunning, hilarious, and beautiful, all at the same time. It’s the scariest and most wonderful muse any mortal could have the pleasure of facing every day. I like to think that I, and many other artists, understand this and can use digestible pieces of the sublime for individual responses from our audience. Friedrich, however, was a master at getting every response all at the same time because, regardless of how impossible the sublime is to imitate, he knew it all too well.
Milo Ferguson's critical essay won first prize in the Eleventh Annual Humanities & Sciences Undergraduate Writing Contest. Milo's story "Personal Log of Astronaut Owen Wei" is also published in this issue. They are an Animation major who graduated this spring and is currently based in the NYC metro area. They're still getting used to this artistic expression thing, but they think it's very fun and want to do it forever. Judges Regina Weinreich & Billy Altman had this say about Milo's prize-winning submission: "This essay was particularly effective in framing a critique of Caspar David Friedrich's The Sea of Ice with a biographical anecdote, and enlarging the discussion of Romanticism to illuminate a subcategory, 'the Sublime.' Showing a personal and compassionate connection to the painting, the writer made the subject their own."